Yandex wants as many mobile apps as Western companies

Yandex, the largest Russian search engine, is planning to unveil its new tool, Metrica, which runs on a variety of different mobile applications. Yandex will present the app tool at the 2013 AppsWorld developer conference and exhibition in London. The software development kit is designed for Android, iPhone or Windows Phone. Metrica is free, unlike other meters used around the world.

In its first version, Metrica will not be a tool for marketing. Its rival, Google Analytics for mobile apps, already can show conversion (installation after advertising) or performance (reaching goals, such as making a purchase with an app). Traffic sources, funnels, and conversions will only be available in future versions of Metrica, if at all.

If Metrica developers and Google are both willing, it could be smoothly integrated into the largest app store for Android. Yandex has already seen cases of Russian software being blocked on the international market. For example, this is what Facebook did when it discovered that the Yandex Wonder application competed with its functionalities.

Currently, Metrica can boast of the way it collects data and displays it almost in real time. Reports are generated a few minutes after the event (including error information).

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Mobile Metrica can also segment data collected according to various criteria: the type and version of the operating system, type of device (tablet or smartphone), model and manufacturer, screen resolution, interface language, the mobile provider, connection type, action, and user sessions.

Given the fact that one of the ways Yandex has penetrated mobile platforms is by promoting its own application store, adapting Metrica to the needs of mobile developers and advertising this functionality at international events seems to be a sensible step.

Yandex may succeed in helping developers become familiar enough with them that they will not be afraid to upload their apps to yet another app store.

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